rate?
“ is about nine hundred and thirty stadia*; and its diameter,
at the bottom of the Gulf, is one thousand five hundred stadia :
the breadth of the entrance (or mouth) is about the same f
that is, about fifteen hundred stadia. Here we have a circumference
considerably less than its diameter, and no way of
getting rid of a difficulty so formidable to mathematicians, without
making such decided alterations in the text as no soberminded
editor would hazard:):. Various readings have been
given, by different commentators, of this passage; but it will be
useless to compare their several merits; since both the measurements
in question will be found to be no less inconsistent with the
"truth than they have been seen to be with each other. For the
* The stade of Strabo has been estimated by Major Rennell, in his admirable treatise
on the itinerary stade of the Greeks, at 700 to a geographical degree ; and 930 stades
will, on this computation, be equal to 100|a Roman miles, or 80^- geographic miles.
While the, dimensions of the diameter, 1500 stades, will be equal to 162§ Roman
miles, or 128-^j- geographic.
*f* H Je [AsyaXYi Xt/grtf rov /asv kvxXov s^ei ara^icov evvecxootcov rgiaxovr« <nov' apM S’ stti rov
• (/'v%ov oia[AETqov y^iXiuv Wsv7«xo<nwv* roaovrov <5e %ov xoci to tov gto\/mtos ^rXaroy.—-Lib. xvii.
p . 385.
J In the second book, however, the measurements given by Strabo are more consistent
; for he tells us that the circumference , of the. Greater Syrtis is (according to Eratosthenes)
five thousand stadia, or 428-j^ geographic milesb; and its depth, from the
Hesperides to Automata, and the limits of the Cyrenaica, one thousand eight hundred,
pr: 154^$y geographic miles. Others, he adds, make the circumference four thousand
stadia, 3 4 2 -^ geographic miles; and the depth one thousand five hundred stadia, or
128t5^ geographic miles; the same, he says, as the breadth of the gulf at its mouth.—
Lib. xi. p. 123.
a The geographical and Roman miles differ (says Shaw, on the authority of D’Anville) as 60 is to 75§,
that is, 60 geographical miles and 75f Roman miles are equal to one degree of a great circle. The Roman
mile is consequently one-fifth less than a geographic mile.—Vol. i. p. 3 0 .'
b At the rate of 700 stades to a degree.